Posts by Karen
I'd treat a new acrophobic hiker the same way I would any other new hiker I was out with. I start out by asking them what they are comfortable with before we even start, as well as what their fitne...
I'm an extremely nearsighted person who has trouble with contacts and spends a whole lot of time being active outdoors. As a result, I've done a lot of investigating into prescription sunglasses, a...
I have three tents, including an ultralight Big Agnes Fly Creek 2. The others are dome tents, including a Eureka Tetragon 2 and a Big Agnes four man tent. The Fly Creek is extremely light, but I ...
One summer job, I needed shoes to walk on a rocky beach, sometimes in the water, for 5 to 10 miles per day all summer. Stretchy neoprene shoes were terrible for this- no traction and no support. S...
That kind of problem is miserable, but fairly common. There are a few things I'd suggest to solve it. Good, wicking underwear. It sounds like you've tried at least one version, but it is wo...
Waterproofing is one of the most important things to the average camper, so an reasonable quality, inexpensive tent will stay dry through mild rains and occasional thunderstorms, and if the tent i...
I want to go backpacking with a couple friends, but I'm the only one of us with any experience, and I mostly day hike. I've only done a couple of backpacking trips. They've never backpacked, and on...
In addition to the answers already mentioned, I prefer red light while outdoors in the summer because it seems to attract fewer insects. I always seem to have more insects flying around my face if ...
You will pick up ticks by spending a lot of time outdoors, but I routinely find them after walking across 10 ft of grass between my car and my front door. No matter how much prevention you practice...
If your tarp is heavy duty enough, I'd expect it to work. Most blue plastic tarps are fairly thin and weak, so while it might work, it would be risky. The difficulty is that you will be abrading ...
If it is clean, fresh snow, it is safe to drink. This is basically drinking rain water. It hasn't had time to pick up pollutants when it is newly fallen. I live in New England, and kids do this all...
This is not a survival technique. The way to determine how many calories is in a particular food item is to measure the amount of heat energy emitted when an item is burned. Anything burned to as...
Compasses are good equipment both spelunking and diving. Even the deepest cave you could go to is still near the earth's surface, geologically speaking. The earth's magnetic field is also essential...
Genetics is one factor contributing to a deer's antler size, but certainly not the only factor. In many cases, maybe most, it isn't even the most important factor. Age: Young bucks that aren't ful...
I live an area where a lot of the woods was farms a hundred years ago. 50 years ago it was bushy fields, now it's heavily wooded with increasingly narrow cart paths running through it. A lot of the...
When I've had to clean spray paint from remote destinations, we've used chemical paint removers in spray bottles and scrub brushes. Do not do this on a historic site without permission from whoev...
The biggest difference between ravens and crows is that ravens average 2 feet long with a 4 ft wingspan, while crows are about 1.5 ft long with a wingspan of 3 feet. These numbers can vary a bit re...
The short version is that whoever can most easily get out of the way, does. Others have answered with the legal, official rules, and if you are at all serious about boating, you need to learn thes...
Make the trip short and easy. Better to have them wishing for something longer than regretting that they're stuck on the trail. Just spend one night on the trail, in good weather if you can arrange...
You linked to an industrial sized watermaker (75 gallons per hour) but they do come in smaller sizes for significantly less money. But think hard about how much water you actually need. I'd consid...
Since you are looking at shoes that only come in full sizes, I'm guessing you're looking at very cheap shoes. A cheap water shoe is usually made of a rubber sole and an upper of neoprene (somewhat ...
As a New Englander who hikes a lot, I’d say that the sight of any good signage is so startling and unexpected that the appearance of the material should be a distant secondary concern to the signs’...
In the US, Designated Wilderness Areas are areas relatively untouched by human influence where users are only allowed on foot and with pack animals. Some areas will have other restrictions, like pe...
Why Not Trap? Raccoons are smart. They know that one of them got caught in the trap and they know that by going in, they risk the same. If you're patient, it's likely you'll catch more within a fe...
The leaves and berries look like a blueberry, probably a highbush blueberry from your description. If that's the case, they are edible. I'm not familiar enough with Colorado vegetation to know if t...
